Though there are a lot of ways to put your money to work on Wall Street, buying and holding dividend stocks over the long run is certainly one of the more effective ways to build wealth.

Approximately 10 years ago, JPMorgan Chase unveiled a study that compared the performance of publicly traded companies that initiated and grew their payouts to public companies with no dividend over a period of 40 years (1972 to 2012). Unsurprisingly, the income stocks clobbered the non-payers to the tune of an annualized return of 9.5% versus 1.6% for those without a dividend.

Companies that regularly pay a dividend to their shareholders tend to be profitable on a recurring basis, can offer transparent long-term growth outlooks, and are often time-tested. In other words, they're just the type of businesses we'd expect to grow in value over multiple years and decades.

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Source Fool.com